• Meeting Registration Now Required
• Chapter Meeting Details
• Deep Dialogue Details
• Make Polluters Pay Petition Drop
• Stipend Reform Ballot Question
• Heat Pump Info
• Plastics & Climate Change
• ECA Member Survey on Nuclear Power
• No Kings Protest on October 18
• Legislative Working Groups
• What We've Been Reading

ECA Mass monthly Chapter Meetings and Deep Dialogues require registration to attend. This is already done for Zoom meetings by most other groups and we think you'll find there are valuable benefits. Note: You can register at the beginning of the meeting and still be included.

• After registering, you will receive an email with the Zoom link to the meeting, as well as the option to add the event to your electronic calendar.
• On the day of the meeting, you will receive an email reminder.
• After the event, you will be sent an email with a link to the recording and presentation. This can be particularly helpful if you were unable to attend at the time of the meeting. All chapter meetings and Deep Dialogues can also be viewed on the ECA Mass website.

“Save the Date” notifications will include the registration link to use for the meeting. 

Dr. Richard Birdsey

Chris Ives, PhD

DEEP DIALOGUE

MONDAY, OCTOBER 27

4 - 5:30 PM on Zoom

Register here!

Climate Activism: Self-sacrifice or Greater Fulfillment?

Many people imagine that greening their daily lives and getting involved in climate activism necessitates sacrificing much of their personal pleasure and happiness. The Buddhist tradition offers resources for engaging in lifestyle change and structural change in a way that results in greater fulfillment, not less. Though most ECA members are already cognizant of the benefits of engagement, this Deep Dialogue offers us a chance to discuss resources for talking with family, friends, and neighbors about getting more involved in responding to the climate crisis.

ECA member Chris Ives is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at Stonehill College. In his scholarship he focuses on ethics in Zen Buddhism, and recently he has been working on Buddhist approaches to nature and environmental issues. His publications include Zen Ecology: Green and Engaged Living in Response to the Climate Crisis (2025). Please see a review of his book later in this newsletter.

Make Polluters Pay Petition Drop

Date: Tuesday, October 21

Time: 10 AM

Where: Meet at the Massachusetts State House steps

What are we doing? Rally on the State House steps, unveil banners and art work that will ask: Legislators, which path will you take? Then we will move to the Hooker Entrance and send in our petition delivery team to hand-deliver thousands of petitions to key elected officials, including the Environment and Natural Resources Committee who will convene that afternoon.

RSVP HERE

Please sign the Make Polluters Pay Petition if you haven't.

Questions? Email: tgrosowsky@verizon.net.

Tina Grosowsky

The Massachusetts stipend reform petition, An Act to reform and regulate legislative stipends, aims to make the legislature more effective and transparent.

Currently, the Massachusetts Legislature is ranked as the least effective and least transparent in the country. The system of leadership stipends, sometimes referred to as “loyalty stipends,” is considered the primary cause of legislative dysfunction. A cross-partisan alliance of former lawmakers, civic leaders, and reform advocates is working to enact the reforms needed to make the Legislature more transparent and responsive to constituents. To get this measure on the ballot, the coalition needs to gather 75,000 signatures by November 19, 2025! The ballot initiative was introduced after a bill with the same intent was killed in the Legislature.

Some background information

The Speaker of the House and Senate President determine who is awarded stipends. Past and current members of the legislature have shared that a stipend depends on “toeing the line” of leadership. Examples of infractions that could cost a legislator a stipend, include criticizing leadership, forcing a vote on a divisive issue, or voting differently from leadership on a major bill, and speaking to the media without permission.

This is not how a representative democracy is meant to operate.

The stipend amount has quadrupled since 2013 and is now the largest fund of any state. Massachusetts legislators receive the lowest salary of any other full time legislature in the country; the stipend system can make a significant difference in legislator salaries. One fix for this problem is to add stipends to raise the floor for many reps and senators, one of several conditions outlined in the initiative.

Petitions are city by city and must be signed on a specific, state-prepared paper form. Go to this site and help by requesting a petition form and/or helping to gather signatures from your network. 

Launa Zimmaro

Massachusetts’ electric utilities now offer seasonal heat pump rates designed to reduce winter energy costs for residential customers who heat their homes with electric heat pumps. Rates vary by utility but generally offer lower distribution charges in colder months, encouraging broader heat pump adoption. Each utility’s program is unique—contact your utility directly for details and enrollment links.

Eversource: Learn more on eversource.com

National Grid: Learn more on ngrid.com

Unitil: Learn more and enroll via Unitil.com

Questions?

Visit the Mass Save heat pump rate FAQ for details and answers to common questions. To find out how the seasonal heat pump rate applies in your case and how to enroll, visit your utility’s official website.

Tina Grosowsky

Global plastic production increasingly drives climate change, since plastics are made from fossil fuels.

Plastics are so detrimental to our ability to reach our necessary climate goals that keen observers refer to them as our “new coal.”

The extracting, refining, making, and disposing of this “new coal” releases four times more greenhouse gas emissions than the airline industry does. This amount of emissions equals those spewed by 600 coal-fired power plants. Bear in mind: the U.S. operates about 200 coal-fired plants.

If plastics were a country, its emissions would exceed all but those of China, the U.S., India, and Russia.

To appreciate plastics’ ubiquity: the Great Wall of China weighs 116 billion pounds. We’d need to build 5.8 million Great Walls every year to equal the 300 billion TONS of plastic produced. Half of those tons become single-use plastic items. Used once, we toss them away, trusting they’ll be recycled. Most of them won’t be. 

For more information about (1) this topic see here; (2) ECA’s plastics legislative priorities see here.

Melissa Ludtke

Fifty-six ECA Mass members responded to our survey on nuclear power. You can still let your voice be heard here. With such a small number of respondents, we cannot draw any conclusions about where our general membership stands on the issue, but we can say we have:

• A significant number of members with serious concerns about the risks of nuclear power
• Many with strong opinions in opposition to nuclear power and small nuclear reactors (SMR) and
• Many who express some uncertainty about the pros and cons of nuclear power

The survey did not identify many members who strongly support nuclear power and SMRs (1-11% across the relevant questions), but that does not mean there could be many more supporters out there who did not take the survey. You can see the full survey results here.

Health, Safety, and Need for Nuclear Power

On questions related to...

Roger Luckmann

The next nationwide No Kings protest is Saturday, October 18. Check out this map for a protest near you. Protests are another way to connect with those who share the same concerns - and they're fun! You may think that a protest in a blue city isn't worth it, but every protest is part of our national movement and a huge turnout all over the country is important - and impactful. If you’re concerned about what’s happening in America and where we’re headed domestically and internationally - you're not alone. Join us on October 18.

America got started by facing down bullies. There’s no reason to give into one now.  

Leadership Team

NEWS FLASH: Get to Know Your State Legislators

The Legislative Team would like to hear from ECA Mass members interested in teaming up with other members in their legislative district to develop or strengthen a relationship with state reps and senators. Legislative Team members would provide training and support. Teams would be called upon at key moments to reach out to specific legislators to advocate for priority bills. If you're interested in hearing more about this initiative, email Roger Luckmann.

Our Working Groups in Action

The Buildings and Energy Working Group (WG) has been busy testifying at the Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy Committee (TUE) hearing last week and preparing written testimony to be submitted this week on bills addressing Mass Save home energy audits, large building decarbonization, making home energy efficiency ratings available to home buyers, funding for retrofitting affordable housing, and incentives to get towns to develop plans for decarbonizing. The WG, along with Gas Transition Allies, was also involved in a meeting with Rep. Cusack, co-chair of TUE, on bills related to winding down the gas system Go here to see more information about specific bills.

The Plastics WG continues to plan and implement...

Roger Luckmann

You can't see all the CROWDS in front of us in this photo, but we had a terrific time Sunday, September 9 at the 2025 Brookline Day! We were in the lineup of Brookline climate action groups which was so effective that next year, we're planning with Climate Action Brookline and others to have an Enviro-Village area complete with EVs and micro-mobility electric bikes and scooters to play with (ahem, I mean try out). It was a tabling day record: welcome to 24 new members who signed up. THANKS to Dawn Edell, Bob Husson, Dave Damm-Luhr, and Maiyim Baron for helping out. We couldn't have done it without you.

If you missed the fun this time, let MaiyimBaron@gmail.com know that you can join her at the Brookline Farmers Market on Thursday afternoon, October 9.

Maiyim Baron

Christopher Ives, an active member of our Natural Solutions Working Group, has written an engaging book about "engaged" Buddhism and climate activism. (Zen Ecology: Green and Engaged Living in Response to the Climate Crisis by Christopher Ives.) The introduction emphasizes Buddhist values, practices, and ideas including "mindfulness, generosity, and contentment to envision a type of environmental virtue ethic" (p.3). Together, the chapters show how Zen Buddhism aligns with green principles as the book's title implies. A professor of religious studies at Stonehill College and a resident of Watertown, Ives addresses a diverse readership: those interested in or practitioners of Zen Buddhism, and those attentive to living and acting in the ongoing climate crisis. 

Zen Buddhism accentuates...

Susan Bernstein

If you would like to become more involved with ECA Mass on one of our teams (Communication, Education, Legislative, Membership or Research) please contact Tina Grosowsky, tgrosowsky@verizon.net.

Tina Grosowsky

We send announcements of our meetings and Action Alerts to eca-mass@googlegroups.com, which includes all those on our active list. 

Please contact Dawn Edell if you want to confirm you are on our active list.

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Did you miss an ECA Mass chapter meeting or deep dialogue? Or do you want to share one with friends and family? 

We have you covered! Videos of past chapter meetings are here and videos of past deep dialogues are here.